Abbe Mouret's Transgression

Then she set them on the ground again. Other hens were now coming up to eat the rice. A large ruddy cock with flaming plumage followed them, lifting his large feet with majestic caution.

‘Alexander is getting splendid,’ said the Abbe, to please his sister.

Alexander was the cock’s name. He looked up at the young girl with his fiery eye, his head turned round, his tail outspread, and then installed himself close by her skirts.

‘He is very fond of me,’ she said. ‘Only I can touch him. He is a good bird. There are fourteen hens, and never do I find a bad egg in the nests. Do I, Alexander?’

She stooped; the bird did not fly from her caress. A rush of blood seemed to set his comb aflame; flapping his wings, and stretching out his neck, he burst into a long crow which rang out like a blast from a brazen throat. Four times did he repeat his crow while all the cocks of Les Artaud answered in the distance. Desiree was greatly amused by her brother’s startled looks.

‘He deafens one, eh?’ she said. ‘He has a splendid voice. But he’s not vicious, I assure you, though the hens are – You remember the big speckled one, that used to lay yellow eggs? Well, the day before yesterday she hurt her foot. When the others saw the blood they went quite mad. They all followed her, pecking at her and drinking her blood, so that by the evening they had eaten up her foot. I found her with her head behind a stone, like an idiot, saying nothing, and letting herself be devoured.’

The remembrance of the fowls’ voracity made her laugh. She calmly related other cruelties of theirs: young chickens devoured, of which she had only found the necks and wings, and a litter of kittens eaten up in the stable in a few hours.

‘You might give them a human being,’ she continued, ‘they’d finish him. And aren’t they tough livers! They get on with a broken limb even. They may have wounds, big holes in their bodies, and still they’ll gobble their victuals. That’s what I like them for; their flesh grows again in two days; they are always as warm as if they had a store of sunshine under their feathers. When I want to give them a treat, I cut them up some raw meat. And worms too! Wait, you’ll see how they love them.’

She ran to the dungheap, and unhesitatingly picked up a worm she found there. The fowls darted at her hands; but to amuse herself with the sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued by the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and talked pettingly to them; while Abbe Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of voracious life.

‘No, I am not at all comfortable,’ he said to his sister, when she tried to make him feel the weight of a fowl she was fattening. ‘It always makes me uneasy to touch live animals.’

He tried to smile, but Desiree taxed him with cowardice.

‘Ah well, what about my ducks, and geese, and turkeys?’ said she. ‘What would you do if you had all those to look after? Ducks are dirty, if you like. Do you hear them shaking their bills in the water? And when they dive, you can only see their tails sticking straight up like ninepins. Geese and turkeys, too, are not easy to manage. Isn’t it fun to see them walking along with their long necks, some quite white and others quite black? They look like ladies and gentlemen. And I wouldn’t advise you to trust your finger to them. They would swallow it at a gulp. But my fingers, they only kiss – see!’

Her words were cut short by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely set eyes, it seemed to wear a diabolical grin. But Desiree caught it round the neck, kissed its head, played and ran with it, and talked about how she liked to drink its milk. She often did so, she said, when she was thirsty in the stable.

‘See, it has plenty of milk,’ she added, pointing to the animal’s udder.

The priest lowered his eyes. He could remember having once seen in the cloister of Saint-Saturnin at Plassans a horrible stone gargoyle, representing a goat and a monk; and ever since he had always looked on goats as dissolute creatures of hell. His sister had only been allowed to get one after weeks of begging. For his part, whenever he came to the yard, he shunned all contact with the animal’s long silky coat, and carefully guarded his cassock from the touch of its horns.

‘All right, I’ll let you go now,’ said Desiree, becoming aware of his growing discomfort. ‘But you must just let me show you something else first. Promise not to scold me, won’t you? I have not said anything to you about it, because you wouldn’t have allowed it… But if you only knew how pleased I am!’

As she spoke she put on an entreating expression, clasped her hands, and laid her head upon her brother’s shoulder.

‘Another piece of folly, no doubt,’ he murmured, unable to refrain from smiling.

‘You won’t mind, will you?’ she continued, her eyes glistening with delight. ‘You won’t be angry? – He is so pretty!’

Thereupon she ran to open the low door under the shed, and forthwith a little pig bounded into the middle of the yard.

‘Oh! isn’t he a cherub?’ she exclaimed with a look of profound rapture as she saw him leap out.

The little pig was indeed charming, quite pink, his snout washed clean by the greasy slops placed before him, though incessant routing in his trough had left a ring of dirt about his eyes. He trotted about, hustled the fowls, rushing to gobble up whatever was thrown them, and upsetting the little yard with his sudden turns and twists. His ears flapped over his eyes, his snout went snorting over the ground, and with his slender feet he resembled a toy animal on wheels. From behind, his tail looked like a bit of string that served to hang him up by.

‘I won’t have this beast here!’ exclaimed the priest, terribly put out.

‘Oh, Serge, dear old Serge,’ begged Desiree again, ‘don’t be so unkind. See, what a harmless little thing he is! I’ll wash him, I’ll keep him very clean. La Teuse went and had him given her for me. We can’t send him back now. See, he is looking at you; he wants to smell you. Don’t be afraid, he won’t eat you.’

But she broke off, seized with irresistible laughter. The little pig had blundered in a dazed fashion between the goat’s legs, and tripped her up. And he was now madly careering round, squeaking, rolling, scaring all the denizens of the poultry-yard. To quiet him Desiree had to get him an earthen pan full of dish-water. In this he wallowed up to his ears, splashing and grunting, while quick quivers of delight coursed over his rosy skin. And now his uncurled tail hung limply down.

The stirring of this foul water put a crowning touch to Abbe Mouret’s disgust. Ever since he had been there, he had choked more and more; his hands and chest and face were afire, and he felt quite giddy. The odour of the fowls and rabbits, the goat, and the pig, all mingled in one pestilential stench. The atmosphere, laden with the ferments of life, was too heavy for his maiden shoulders. And it seemed to him that Desiree had grown taller, expanding at the hips, waving huge arms, sweeping the ground with her skirts, and stirring up all that powerful odour which overpowered him. He had only just time to open the wicket. His feet clung to the stone flags still dank with manure, in such wise that it seemed as if he were held there by some clasp of the soil. And suddenly, despite himself, there came back to him a memory of the Paradou, with its huge trees, its black shadows, its penetrating perfumes.

‘There, you are quite red now,’ Desiree said to him as she joined him outside the wicket. ‘Aren’t you pleased to have seen everything? Do you hear the noise they are making?’

On seeing her depart, the birds and animals had thrown themselves against the trellis work emitting piteous cries. The little pig, especially, gave vent to prolonged whines that suggested the sharpening of a saw. Desiree, however, curtsied to them and kissed her finger-tips to them, laughing at seeing them all huddled together there, like so many lovers of hers. Then, hugging her brother, as she accompanied him to the garden, she whispered into his ear with a blush: ‘I should so like a cow.’

He looked at her, with a ready gesture of disapproval.

‘No, no, not now,’ she hurriedly went on. ‘We’ll talk about it again later on – But there would be room in the stable. A lovely white cow with red spots. You’d soon see what nice milk we should have. A goat becomes too little in the end. And when the cow has a calf!’

At the mere thought of this she skipped and clapped her hands with glee; and to the priest she seemed to have brought the poultry-yard away with her in her skirts. So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair, without thought of stinging her.

XII

Brother Archangias dined at the parsonage every Thursday. As a rule he came early so as to talk over parish matters. It was he who, for the last three months, had kept the Abbe informed of all the affairs of the valley. That Thursday, while waiting till La Teuse should call them, they strolled about in front of the church. The priest, on relating his interview with Bambousse, was surprised to find that the Brother thought the peasant’s reply quite natural.

‘The man’s right,’ said the Ignorantin.[4 - A popular name in France for a Christian Brother. – ED.] ‘You don’t give away chattels like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it’s always hard to see your own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.’

‘Still,’ rejoined Abbe Mouret, ‘a marriage is the only way of stopping the scandal.’

The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly. ‘Do you think you’ll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?’ he exclaimed. ‘Before another two years Catherine will be following her sister’s example. They all go the same way, and as they end by marrying, they snap their fingers at every one. These Artauds flourish in it all, as on a congenial dungheap. There is only one possible remedy, as I have told you before: wring all the girls’ necks if you don’t want the country to be poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Cure, but a good thick stick!’

Then calming down a bit, he added: ‘Let every one do with their own as they think best.’

He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes; but Abbe Mouret replied in an absent-minded way, his eyes dwelling on the village at his feet in the setting sun. The peasants were wending their way homewards, silently and slowly, with the dragging steps of wearied oxen returning to their sheds. Before the tumble-down houses stood women calling to one another, carrying on bawling conversations from door to door, while bands of children filled the roadway with the riot of their big clumsy shoes, grovelling and rolling and pushing each other about. A bestial odour ascended from that heap of tottering houses, and the priest once more fancied himself in Desiree’s poultry-yard, where life ever increased and multiplied. Here, too, was the same incessant travail, which so disturbed him. Since morning his mind had been running on that episode of Rosalie and Fortune, and now his thoughts returned to it, to the foul features of existence, the incessant, fated task of Nature, which sowed men broadcast like grains of wheat. The Artauds were a herd penned in between four ranges of hills, increasing, multiplying, spreading more and more thickly over the land with each successive generation.

‘See,’ cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point to a tall girl who was letting her sweetheart snatch a kiss, ‘there is another hussy over there!’

He shook his long black arms at the couple and made them flee. In the distance, over the crimson fields and the peeling rocks, the sun was dying in one last flare. Night gradually came on. The warm fragrance of the lavender became cooler on the wings of the light evening breeze which now arose. From time to time a deep sigh fell on the ear as if that fearful land, consumed by ardent passions, had at length grown calm under the soft grey rain of twilight. Abbe Mouret, hat in hand, delighted with the coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.

‘Monsieur le Cure! Brother Archangias!’ cried La Teuse. ‘Come quick! The soup is on the table.’

It was cabbage soup, and its odoriferous steam filled the parsonage dining-room. The Brother seated himself and fell to, slowly emptying the huge plate that La Teuse had put down before him. He was a big eater, and clucked his tongue as each mouthful descended audibly into his stomach. Keeping his eyes on his spoon, he did not speak a word.

‘Isn’t my soup good, then, Monsieur le Cure?’ the old servant asked the priest. ‘You are only fiddling with your plate.’

‘I am not a bit hungry, my good Teuse,’ Serge replied, smiling.

‘Well! how can one wonder at it when you go on as you do! But you would have been hungry, if you hadn’t lunched at past two o’clock.’

Brother Archangias, tilting into his spoon the last few drops of soup remaining in his plate, said gravely: ‘You should be regular in your meals, Monsieur le Cure.’

At this moment Desiree, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then left alone with Abbe Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread, which he ate while waiting for the next dish.

‘So you made a long round to-day?’ he asked the priest. But before the other could reply a noise of footsteps, exclamations, and ringing laughter, arose at the end of the passage, in the direction of the yard. A short altercation apparently took place. A flute-like voice which disturbed the Abbe rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died away in a burst of glee.

‘What can it be?’ said Serge, rising from his chair.

But Desiree bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her gathered-up skirt. And she burst out excitedly: ‘Isn’t she queer? She wouldn’t come in at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully strong; she soon got away from me.’